Well, what's the point in beating around the bush trying to be nasty to each other through tone that doesn't carry over through text anyway.

At least this way people can be like "Oh, he's not swearing at me and telling me to fuck off, clearly he's not annoyed with me"

I'll be the first to openly admit, my initial reaction to people who pop in to complain about the comics is hostile. I find very few people more useless in life than those who make a habit of complaining about a product on that products forums rather than through personal correspondence with the provider of the product.

I'd be curious to find out how many of these concern trolls (yeah, moor saying he disagrees doesn't exactly change my opinion of it, no offense dude but it is totally a glass half full vs half empty scenario) actually bothered to write the artist an email asking for a clarification of intent.

I mean I totally get that it's a lot juicer to pick, prod and re-interpret til the subject matter seems to be saying what you want it to so that you can be offended. Strong emotions, both positive and negative, are awesome and terrible all at once and frankly human beings tend to seek them out. (No source for that, and im not going to bother trying to provide one either so ) I just didn't really have the patience for it when it was the mra-folks up on their cross and I don't have the patience for it with anyone who has to stretch that far for the implication that it bears some similarities to TERF style feminism. Especially when there's no indication they've engaged the actual artist on the subject matter at all._________________

Of course. The subforum dedicated to the comic is in no way the proper place to discuss the content of the comic. Makes total sense. Or at least, if despite all reason you wish to discuss it, you...you don't have any concern about the content, right?....

I agree there's no reason to be subtle and true, there having been a lot of people who came here just to troll, no one says you shouldn't bash those people. But to consider, on principle that any negative post is a troll, is ridiculous.

As for the other gem...emailing the author. Ya. Good luck. The author is obviously the person who wants to deal regularly with emails and fans, don't you see how quickly he replies to requests for becoming a forum member? Or how often he posts here?
Aside from all that, you seriously think that the sane thing to do when you have a question or disagreement with something in one comic strip is to email Ishida and ask for clarifications instead of discussing with he other people who read the comic and post regularly in the forums, discussing -oh great surprise- the content of the comic?

Of course. The subforum dedicated to the comic is in no way the proper place to discuss the content of the comic. Makes total sense. Or at least, if despite all reason you wish to discuss it, you...you don't have any concern about the content, right?....

I agree there's no reason to be subtle and true, there having been a lot of people who came here just to troll, no one says you shouldn't bash those people. But to consider, on principle that any negative post is a troll, is ridiculous.

As for the other gem...emailing the author. Ya. Good luck. The author is obviously the person who wants to deal regularly with emails and fans, don't you see how quickly he replies to requests for becoming a forum member? Or how often he posts here?
Aside from all that, you seriously think that the sane thing to do when you have a question or disagreement with something in one comic strip is to email Ishida and ask for clarifications instead of discussing with he other people who read the comic and post regularly in the forums, discussing -oh great surprise- the content of the comic?

1. No, the subforum of the comic IS the place to discuss the content of the comic, it ISN'T the place to lay baseless speculation as to the friendliness or unfriendliness toward trans issues of the artist of the strip. Especially when you have to basically ignore all context to reach that conclusion.

2. Any negative post isn't a troll. "Now i'm not claiming this comic is anti trans but if you ignore the context and history of it it sounds suspiciously like it is" pretty much is trolling. It's like the definition of concern trolling, it's the prime technique it is how concern trolling is done brah.

3. Because being slow to approve new forumites after the shitstorm of flak he got for taking the comic down the feminist storylines is exactly the same thing as being unwilling to engage on a topic he's currently exploring.

4. I think people genuinely concerned would take that tack far before using the tortured logic I saw them take to draw the conclusion in the first place. Varthonai is a subtle troll, go back, re-read and look how quickly they escalated to all these hypothetical situations, with no actual bearing to the strip presented that would totes prove Tat was a TERF. If they aren't a concern troll, they're doing a damn fine job of imitating one._________________

I don't know if what you said makes sense Varthonai, I'll give it another read through tomorrow.

But it sounds like you're saying that you don't think the strip itself was actually transphobic or that you think Tat was displaying a TERF allegory. Is that right?

It sounds to me like your issue is more with how the Sisterhood use violence against the drones, given that robots seem to all have sentience in Sinfest, as well as concerns about what would happen if a group like the Sisterhood actually was in control. And then the stuff you see as TERF adjacent, close enough to be mistaken for it?_________________::crisis mode::

I don't understand what the Sisterhood should've done otherwise. Leave the obvious threat be in the safe space and render it un-safe? Tell them politely to go away (which they won't, because they've been sent to destroy them)? Try to reason with them which won't happen because despite being sentient, they're still being controlled and thus follow who controls them (remember, if it wasn't for the Sisterhood, fembot would've never been able to choose for herself)?_________________www.cobrasphinx.nl

4. I think people genuinely concerned would take that tack far before using the tortured logic I saw them take to draw the conclusion in the first place. Varthonai is a subtle troll, go back, re-read and look how quickly they escalated to all these hypothetical situations, with no actual bearing to the strip presented that would totes prove Tat was a TERF. If they aren't a concern troll, they're doing a damn fine job of imitating one.

Monkey, there were at least two other people in this thread who indicated that they got the same "escalated" vibes as me without my saying anything, I was just the first to speak. : / You had me in a panic at first because even with lurking I didn't expect to set you off this easily, but I guess your subsequent posts have convinced me that I'm not special and you are just naturally inclined to pick on and suspect newbies of being trolls for no good reason? I mean your urban dictionary link supposedly demonstrating how I am "the definition of concern trolling" doesn't even describe anything I posted; I never said that Tat was going to get in trouble, hardly anybody ever gets in serious trouble for being transphobic (which is kind of the whole problem), the only trouble Tat is facing is my impotent disappointment, and wow, what a big difference that's making.

That's fine, though. I don't really post expecting to change minds, I mainly just come to resolve the anxiety that I feel when strips come up that bother me. Sometimes the thread has already identified the same problem that I did and I feel at peace knowing I wasn't the only one who spotted it. Sometimes the thread points out a detail I hadn't noticed and my perspective changes a little bit and I find peace that way. Sometimes I still feel the same way that I did at the start and no one agrees with me, but I still got to say my piece and that illusion of agency is comforting.

Maybe you consider arguing without expecting to change minds to be trolling by default, but my stated opinions are genuine. And as Moor already indicated on my behalf, I try hard to be sensitive to the state of the thread and avoid derailing other people's ongoing serious discussions just to make them about my issues. Because on the whole, I like this community. By and large it has been helpful and supportive to me, and I am grateful for that. No one but you has seen a problem with this so far as I am aware, and if you're the only one then I guess I can live with that. One bully is a lot fewer than I've had to get used to in the past.

Getting back to the argument that isn't a ridiculous tangent provoked by a shameless ad hominem, you're putting words in my mouth. Not only have I not said that Tat is a TERF, I have explicitly said more than once that I DON'T think he is a TERF and that this was an unintentionally (but nonetheless genuinely) problematic strip.

Reiterating my points:
1. The Sisterhood's response to these drones, as presented in-universe, strikes me as in-character transphobia because it depends upon a premise that "real women" act in a certain way that is not only readily distinguishable from supposed "fake women", but is in fact SO readily distinguishable that it is safe to pair with capital punishment. That in and of itself is actually fine by me though. Acts of transphobia in-universe aren't necessarily being condoned by the narrative. The problem is that it leads into...
2. The premise of the strip, which strikes me as transphobic because the notion that men are very likely to attempt to invade women's-only spaces using this strategy is pretty much exactly the argument put forth by TERF.
3. TAT IS MOST LIKELY OBLIVIOUS TO POINTS 1 AND 2 AND I DO NOT THINK HE IS CONSCIOUSLY PROMOTING TERF IDEOLOGY, but they are both still serious enough that he should be held accountable, and by "be held accountable" I basically mean "be subjected to the calling out in forums and/or angry email of a handful of fans who will easily be dismissed as oversensitive and silly but might at least let him know that he stepped on some toes and should be more careful in the future"

Honestly I think everyone is putting way too much stock in it having been unintentional. I mean one of the main lessons of SinFest is that unintentionally problematic decisions and habitual micro-aggressions caused indirectly by lifelong exposure to societal norms are still a major part of the problem and yet here we are as students of SinFest going "well obviously Tat didn't INTEND it to resemble this, so obviously he is still the perfect ally that he's ALWAYS BEEN ever since he stopped glamorizing pimps". I doubt that Tat really thought to connect this strip to trans issues at all when he made it, more likely he was just acting upon exposure to the problematic trope of cross-dressing to deceive that he'd seen in other comedy media and didn't stop to analyze its implications in this new context. (/stripeypants said something to this effect earlier)

stripeypants wrote:

But it sounds like you're saying that you don't think the strip itself was actually transphobic or that you think Tat was displaying a TERF allegory. Is that right?

It sounds to me like your issue is more with how the Sisterhood use violence against the drones, given that robots seem to all have sentience in Sinfest, as well as concerns about what would happen if a group like the Sisterhood actually was in control. And then the stuff you see as TERF adjacent, close enough to be mistaken for it?

Yes to all of that, except to clarify one point: I DO think the strip itself is transphobic. I realize that is a big thing to say, and I completely understand folks disagreeing. But I also believe that unintentional transphobia is still transphobia and needs to be treated as such, for the reasons I outlined above.

This is the same standard I use for myself. I've been immersed in a casually transphobic society since childhood, same as Tat has and we all have, and while I believe in personal responsibility to work at correcting this through self-education, I accept that no education can make up for an entire childhood of indoctrination. And I expect that because of that, I am likely at some point in my life to say or do something ignorant that will make a trans person feel like shit. And if that happens, if I don't figure it out on my own, I hope there is someone around who can articulate it to me so that I can try to make amends and not make the same mistake twice. And I expect that someone to use the word "transphobia" to describe what I did, even though what I did will have been unintentional. Good intentions make you more sympathetic but they don't relieve you of responsibility for the damage you cause.

Yinello wrote:

I don't understand what the Sisterhood should've done otherwise. Leave the obvious threat be in the safe space and render it un-safe?

Again, it only seems obvious because of privileged audience knowledge. The zenzapped drones' physical differences from standard drones are just as superficial as the ones that the "incognito" drones adopted. And as for the "obviously fake" "girl talk", if a stranger who identified herself as female actually approached you and spoke that way, would your first assumption really be "this person is not a woman"? Not just "this person is weird, and maybe trying to be ironic" or something? A lot of people have said that I'm ignoring context but the context I'm ignoring is context that the Sisterhood doesn't have.

The joke works for us because we have privileged audience knowledge (we saw the drones agreeing to assume false gender identities in the first panel) but it shouldn't work for the Sisterhood, that's the discrepancy. There's always been a danger of letting someone from D-Corp into the WOS but the Sisterhood has not made an issue of that until now and their decision to do so now was based on a preconceived notion of how "real women" talk, look, and act. (Has Baby Blue ever been allowed in the WOS? There was a Sunday strip with nearly the entire female cast shown in the WOS about a month ago I think, she might have been in it but I'm not sure, if someone could find it I would be appreciative)

To actually answer your question though, the most appropriate thing to do that I can think of, given the context and circumstances, would be to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them in for now but have Lil Sis watch them and assign someone else to take over Lil Sis' perimeter duties for a while. Lil Sis has been shown to be capable of destroying hostile drones in the blink of an eye (pun intended), so they wouldn't really pose a threat.

This isn't a perfect solution by any means, because obviously it wouldn't feel like a truly safe space for them if they were being watched by someone who intended to kill them if they toed the line and who might be inherently prejudiced against their class of being (spydrones) but it would preserve the feeling of safety for the majority of members of the WOS with reduced potential for murdering drones who have genuinely adopted female identities. I would hope to get rid of the profiling too eventually but I'd settle for this as a first step any day over straight up killing things just because they spoke like a "ringer".

For the sake of consistency, I'd say this is actually probably what should be done with the zenzapped drones too. Our privileged audience knowledge again leads us to believe the Sisterhood should welcome them because they are safe and adorable, but the Sisterhood doesn't know that and I'd accept it as justified to treat them with a degree of suspicion.

1. I'd click that link to drowmemos' profile, and click the read all posts by author button before frothing about how "other people think so too" That dude's a troll. Everyone else has basically expressed understanding that they suspect you could reach that conclusion, if you ignore all past and present context

2. Cross dressing is not the same as transgender. You really need to get that straight first off because it's a wildly different thing. They bear some similarity to how society reacts to you, but one is something people do, the other is something people are. The difference is that motivation matters regarding things you do. In the case of this comic, the motivation is to spy in a space they aren't welcome in.

4. And no, I don't treat every newbie like this, I don't even treat MOST newbies like this, just the ones who come here blatantly concern trolling and then crawl up on a cross when they aren't able to actually back up the claims they're making.

Edit: Fucking clownshoes, and your solution is for them to just suck it up and have their space invaded by drones controlled by someone who has tried to kill them in the past. FFS._________________

No, but it's a subset of the wider transgender sphere. At least, going by the the use of the words where I am, where "transgender"/"trans" covers transitioning, crossdressing/transvestitism (the difference between which tends to resolve into its own sub-argument, with different resolutions in different countries), androgyny, and anything else that deviates from gender norms.

Which is problematic in itself, really, as representing any sort of trans groups becomes a nightmare as you have to manage the conflicting interests of various sub-groups, which is like herding cats at the best of times and impossible at others.

Anyway, it's worth noting that there's at least some variation in the reading of that term, which may be contributing to some of the... differences of opinion on this thread.

I've been googling so much about transsexual (found a neat research article on neuronal densities of transsexual people relating to the densities of the gender with which they identify), transgender, crossdressing... it's been an interesting weekend. Thanks, folks!_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

The premise on how they deal with hostile (enemy faction) bots is not sufficient to deduct any form of transfobia. As such, any accusation is just an attempt to make this into those bullshit court cases they show on TV.

Should they treat a living breathing entity of trans* nature in a harmful way, they will be judged, but as it stands you're just making mental jumps to justify yourself. Stop and desist._________________Bottomless you say?

I've been googling so much about transsexual (found a neat research article on neuronal densities of transsexual people relating to the densities of the gender with which they identify), transgender, crossdressing... it's been an interesting weekend. Thanks, folks!

*side eyes that article* While fascinating, I'm not that thrilled with studies that try to find the "queer" or "trans" gene. It's not purely nature (or nurture), and I worry that these things will be abused by cis and trans people alike. What would happen if to get a diagnosis it would require that you have this particular neuron density because it "proves" that you're telling the truth? If nonbinaries want to transition, what do they do? What if a cis person randomly gets a brain scan and are told they have the neuron density of someone of the "opposite sex", do they have to transition? I guarantee no one would make them, and if they asserted they were their birth assigned gender no one would try to use some random brain scan to disagree with them. But assuming these sort of tests became the criteria for diagnosis instead of therapy or informed consent, it wouldn't matter how a trans person felt about their body or gender, if the test came back as "cis" then nope, you're mistaken.

Basically, I hope you were reading things mostly by trans* people and not just studies done to try to boil it down to neurons or prenatal hormones or finger lengths by cis people.

Also whether or not crossdressing or drag fall under the transgender umbrella is a contentious one. "Cis" AKA not trans simply means "identifies with the gender one was assigned at birth". So a male-assigned crossdresser who still identifies as a man while wearing a dress shouldn't fall under the umbrella of trans by that definition. No one is going to argue that a cis man in a dress isn't a man (not seriously anyway, sort of like how cis people aren't actually degendered with "not a real man/woman") but ho boy will people argue with trans people about their identities no matter what they're wearing, especially if it doesn't conform to narrow gender stereotypes. And with trans women, if they DO wear stereotypically girly stuff they're also shamed for it.

TLDR: gender binary is bullshit, sex binary is wrong, society will shit on trans people and especially women at every opportunity and I don't trust scientists who are also a product of society to not let their research be swayed by ingrained beliefs about gender.

I am also a trans person raised in a transphobic society who finds plenty of transphobia everywhere. I don't find this strip transphobic, and you haven't convinced me otherwise. What you are talking about appears to be entirely based on an assumptive mold you're fitting this storyline into. I can see how it could easily be made transphobic with some tweaking, but as it stands I don't think it fits.

So I think that's all there is to the discussion for me, and I'm done.

Also, Monkey never said anything rude to me as a newbie. I'm sure others have had similar experience._________________::crisis mode::

I'm like 99% sure that I was the rudest regular to you, stripey, and that -still bothers me-. *headdesk* It could also be one of those 'i'm blowing this way out of proportion' situations but when my anxiety over something kicks up I really have no way to tell.

Sorry, if I've somehow not apologized for that._________________Samsally the GrayAce